The (non)sense of tragedies
Monday, June 2, 2025
*Fr. Eduardo Barrios, SJ
When tragedy strikes a community, as it did on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at the Jet Set Club in Santo Domingo, people find themselves overwhelmed with more questions than answers. They cannot find any meaning in it.
We tend to forget that natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, have always occurred. There are also disasters caused by the structural failures of buildings and bridges, and others caused by criminal acts.
The earthquake that claimed more than 200,000 lives in Haiti on January 12, 2010, comes to mind.
As for buildings with construction defects or simply time-related deterioration, we recall an apartment building that partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, on June 24, 2021, killing about 100 people and injuring many others.
When it comes to tragedies caused by human hatred, who can forget the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001? That crime, orchestrated by Osama bin Laden's perverse fanaticism, claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
Sacred history reports a tragedy of the highest magnitude, the Universal Flood (Genesis 6-8). Obviously, the biblical author composed that account with no historical basis whatsoever in order to instill the idea that sin can provoke God's righteous wrath with catastrophic consequences.
Theological anthropology seeks to explain the evils in the world through the story of original sin. We belong to fallen human nature; all of us were born outside the earthly paradise to live an existence exposed to much suffering.
From the moment we are born, we begin our journey toward death. Some lives end before birth, through natural causes or induced abortion, while others reach various stages of life, even living past 100, which is now more common than ever.
A classic book on spirituality, The Imitation of Christ (Thomas à Kempis), mentions several ways in which people die:
"How often have you heard that someone was murdered, another drowned and still another fell and broke his neck; how this person choked to death and another dropped dead while at play? Some have burned to death; some were killed by guns, others by disease, and still others at the hands of robbers" (Book 1, Chapter 23).
There is no choice but to accept the inevitability of death. The Grim Reaper does not discriminate, taking some from this world and leaving others behind. Little by little, we all must face the end.
Going back to Kempis, let's see what he recommends:
"If you ever saw anyone die, remember that you too must travel the same path.
In the morning think that you may not live till night; and when night comes, do not be sure that you will live till tomorrow. Therefore, always be ready, and so live that you will not have an unprovided death"(ibid.).
In the spirit of preparation, the Aragon-born Jesuit, Saint Joseph Pignatelli composed this prayer:
"My God, I do not know what must come to me today. But I am certain that nothing can happen to me that you have not foreseen, decreed, and ordained from all eternity. That is sufficient for me. I adore your impenetrable and eternal designs, to which I submit with all my heart..."
When loved ones are lost in untimely accidents, those left behind should remember that the departed would want them to carry on with their lives and find the strength to overcome their understandable grief. Life must be gradually rebuilt to continue living until God wills otherwise.
Let us pray that the loved ones of tragedy victims can rebuild their lives looking toward the future with the awareness of how limited our time on earth is.
